I7 + 3070 sufficient?

I’m looking at buying an MSI GE76 with an i7 gen 11 processor and either a 3080 or a 3070 GPU. This would be used for competitive egames like Valorant and Overwatch, but also for engineering software like AutoCAD, and then data analysis using R and excel. It would also be used for some VR games and for Elite Dangerous, Witcher, Call of Duty, Skyrim and the like. Given the processor is an i7 with 32 gigs of RAM, how important is it to go with a 3080 GPU at an extra cost of around $400 over a 3070?
Thanks!

 

if you can afford go for the 16gb 3080 but yes 3070 is enough and a very fast card in the ge76...i think its full power aka performance//wicked laptop if you do decide to buy it


only draw back is if you want high refresh rates aka 144hz go for the 3080...otherwise if your happy with 100-110fps go for it


and welcome to the internets smartest community NBR

 

Thanks very much for your reply. I wouldn't pay $5 for a 25 cent pencil even though I can afford it. I assume that the 3080 is worth a certain amount of additional money over the 3070, but I don't know what that amount is: where is that tipping point where you would be uncertain whether to go for the 3080? Let's assume that my budget can handle the extra (it can). And I know this tipping point is dependent on what system and what software is being used, so I tried to give my context.
I'm curious too, about another aspect of this: I'm giving up 1440p with the GE76. For things like autocad, and games like skyrim, witcher 3, and VR games, 1440p might be nice to have. It's hard to balance everything: 1440p might make the system run hot, and come at a price in the competitive egames like Valorant and CS GO. I'd be curious what laptops you might favor assuming the software packages I listed.
Thanks again! I'm a newbie and trying to learn before I buy.

 

i know bro but long story short your only gaining 20 percent with the 3080....so yeah if you want the 5 dollar pencil go for it....otherwise the 3070 is a beast

sorry 19 percent at 1440p not 20

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/comments/ncbhsa/laptop_3070_vs_3080/

 

also stick around NBR you can find some pretty useful info and tweaks.....i highly recommend you check out the sub forum windows .....look into oso shut up 10

 

Another question is whether putting a 3080 in would make the laptop run hotter than with a 3070?
Thanks!

 

it might run 2-3c warmer but nothing to be concerned about the ge76 is a decent laptop for cooling a 3080 or a 3070

 

What's the TDP for 3070 and 3080 in that model? They could be anywhere from 100-150W or more. It would be crazy; but what if the 3070 TDP was identical or more than the 3080 option? Something to look at for sure.

 

off the top of my head i said it was good because they run with full tdp....max power for both 3070 and 3080....it really is a great laptop

 

I have the GP76 model, I think the 3070 in the ge76 model runs the 3070 at 125w without boost and 140w with boost. The 3080 runs at 150w normal, 165w with boost.
the gp76 3070 runs at the 3070 at full speed, 125w normal, 140w with boost.

I dont know what processor you are going for but make sure you put liquid metal TIM on the processor and undervolt the processor. The bios in MSI laptops have options that can undervolt and slight overclock the processor. My laptop runs at 4.31ghz, its a i7 11800h at 83C running at 100% when I edit videos. I put liquid metal TIM on the processor and mx4 on the gpu with a .060mv undervolt.
Without it, it runs at 4.0ghz at 93C.

 

Wow, I had never even heard of liquid metal TIM. I see it on Amazon for 10 bucks. Wow. I was going for the model with i7 11800h, and rtx3070, but if the 3080 runs at 150w normal versus 125w normal, perhaps the 3080 would be smarter, especially since this choice is locked in. I keep asking myself though, what is the price difference at which I should hesitate and consider 3070 and put the money saved into something else? At the moment it looks like the 3080 model is $478 (U.S. dollars) more than the model with 3070, all other specs identical. What price difference would make you pause? I'm also thinking about future-proofing the laptop choice.

 

Wait, that seems like a large temperature difference. My goal is to run normal without a lot of fan noise. I use an external monitor, but my two sons do not, and they do more gaming than I do. They don't care about fan noise as much as I do, however. Lots of things to consider here, lol, I even compared what people said about the quality of the speakers. But back to the temperature difference: if running a 3080 means the fan kicking in noticably more often, that would tend to push me back to the 3070. Plus the comment that at 1080p the 3080 gives less of an improvement over the 3070, at 9% I believe. I'm not a tech geek looking for every possible improvement in performance, but I want my two sons to have a great gaming experience. (I'm buying three of these laptops, one for each of us, myself and two sons.)

 

I have another question. I saw a video from Linus Tech about the density of RAM that was disturbing. How can we tell if the RAM is going to bottleneck on the GE76? The insidious thing about this is that the same model bought a month ago may have the "better" 1Rx8 RAM but purchased today it may have 1Rx16 RAM that will cause 20% slower accessing. Does anybody know more about this? And my specific question would be about the MSI GE76, particularly the 32GB i7 models. I believe I'm going with either the 3070 (11UG-054) or the 3080(11UG-245) in the next few days.
Thanks very much for your perspectives!

 

The 3080 is only about 10% faster in games. To me its not worth the extra money.

 

i agree 3070 is sufficient and that was your main question

 

I cant really comment of what price range or budget you are comfortable with, its a case by case on each person, each person's budget and needs are different.

For me its was worth it because I also do heavy video editing with my laptop, I also help with video editing on a friends youtube channel.

 

Mo power is always better than less power. I got the 3800 and never looked back. If there had been a 3900 I would have got that instead. I checked my ram with Zentimings and it ended up being the good stuff. I would have changed it if it was the crap ram.

 

Do you mean the NVIDIA 3080?
Zentimings doesnt work on intel based laptops, only on AMD cpu based laptops.

 

Oh, that's right. Well there are other utilities to get the info

 

How did you check with Zentimings when it doesnt even start with a intel cpu laptop.

 

Krabman, please share what you did use. Would be nice to not need to open the unit to look.

 

*** Stepping back: what laptop do you think would serve us best? ***
For the last 4 years my two boys and I have been running games on the HP Elitebook 8770W. We each have one:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/produc...mobile-workstation/5257511/document/c03436782
Intel i7-3720QM at 2.60 Ghz, 4 cores. 8 GB RAM.
GPU: 4 GB RAM Nvidia Quadro K4000M, 1080p resolution @ 60 Hz.
We put the OS on a 256 GB mSATA, and then have 500 GB on a second older drive.
Those systems will have lasted us 4 years and actually they are still running fine. The biggest problem is that they are not supported by HP any longer, and the drivers keep getting out of sync with windows 10. These machines were built before windows 10 existed. We almost routinely end up re-installing windows and then of course re-installing all of our apps, games, etc.
I'm hoping that our next systems will not torture us as much. But I'm also curious how the Quadro compares with the Geforce 3070 or 3080.

We all want the 17" screen, but beyond that, anything goes. I think good speakers are a bonus, and lower fan noise as well.
We all play competitive games like Valorant, Overwatch, league of legends, Warframe, Cally of Duty Blackops and others I can't think of at the moment.
I do some coding and analysis of large data sets, financial analysis. One son uses autocad as an engineering student.

I looked at a ton of reviews on YouTube and landed on the MSI GE76, despite it's not providing a 1440p option in the U.S. Alienware X17 was tempting, but the balance of decent speakers and the ports layout tipped me to the GE76. Initially the Asus ROG Zephyrus S17 was my choice, but it's not available, and if it were, I'm not sure it's a better choice than the GE76. What do you think?
ASUS ROG Zephyrus S17
ASUS ROG M16 -- I like the 16:10 layout, and the 1440p.
MSI GE76
Alienware X17
**Insert your favorite here**

P.S. I use an external display and keyboard, but the two boys do not.

 

It sounds too me like you may want to take a gander at the Legion, it's in the price range and meets many of your requirements.

If you just want the part number you can use the command prompt: wmic memorychip get devicelocator, partnumber

Copy the result and do a search and you'll have your information. You can also download one of the utilities that will do this for you; a search will provide you with several choices.

As to how your current hardware compares... It's not even close. In fact you couldn't throw a rock to where close is from where you are. Any of those options are going to make you feel like you've died and gone to performance heaven.

Noise is extremely subjective even when you have a decibel measurement to compare. I had my old laptop running next to my new laptop and although the decibel measurements were similar the old Aorus was perceptually something like half again louder. It had a higher pitched tone that you could hear in the next room. Meanwhile the new laptop seems considerably quieter and yet a read comments from some other owners that the fans are loud. Many of those owners are new to gaming laptops though and I suspect are unaware of just how loud a laptop can get.

To go back to performance your new lappie is going to be much faster at everything. If you're ok with your frame rate now then QHD might be a good idea because that frame rate is going to substantially increase anyway. If you want twitch gaming at the highest possible frame rate then your going to want HD.

Everyone has a different buying strategy. I'm old and have a lot of discretionary income. I buy at the top and then replace my laptop when the next thing comes along. Others are going to have to stick to a defined budget and get what they can within it. You have said you can afford the upgrade but there is afford as in you have the money if necessary and afford as in the cost isn't meaningful to you at your current level of wealth. Both cost an value are relative to wealth: Your billionaire pays 25 cents for a 25 cent pencil just like you or I do because a 25 cent pencil sells for 25 cents. Unlike us he might spring for a Ferrari though because the price difference between it and a Corvette isn't significant to someone with that level of wealth. None of us can tell you the value is there or not, you're the only one with that answer.

 

Look into the msi gp76, its cheaper. Its the same layout but without all the useless lights. both models are 97% same, same motherboard layout, same cooling.

 

I’d be curious what you would pick from these two forced options:

1) MSI GE76 with i7 11th gen and 3070
2) Asus ROG S17 with i9 11th gen and 3070.

Assume you had to choose one of those two. Assume primary use is gaming (valorant, cs go, warframe, call of duty) but also business type activities with MS office. Fan noise worries me.

 

ge76 nuff said ...more tdp on gpu and i9 will throttle like heck

 

I would go with the ge75. Because it has advanced bios and xmp profile. I don't know if the asus has it. You can also get the ge76 with an i9.
Look into the gp76, a bit cheaper and same layout of the ge76.

 

Sorry I’m a newbie: when you say throttle, do you mean that as a bad thing? I’m thinking unnecessary heat generation.

 

I have a vague impression that the GP76 was built with some “cutting of corners” in the build quality compared to the GE76, particularly the GE76 that was updated later this year. Where did I get this vague impression? From talking to various people at reputable places like Gentech. Are they handing me a line of guff? I am not really equipped to determine that, lol.

 

Thanks for that!!
I freaked out at 8:24 of this review:

He had the i9/3080 config.

 

Fan noise can be reduced by editing your profiles only if you have the room on thermals, he is not going to have that when gaming. He should also be aware that the fan noise on any modern gaming laptop will be objectionable to some people, they are not quiet when flogged unless someone is willing to accept a massive loss in performance which negates the point of a powerful gaming laptop. Headphones remove the issue but not for others that may be in the room.

Agree on the value choice being best for most buyers but not all. The actual Delta between the two graphics solutions is not a couple frames, it's significantly more. This will give you some ideas of real world numbers and it matches what users are reporting on the Reddit for my laptop between the two cards. Keep in mind there are many different laptops performing quite differently depending on their available power, MUX of lack thereof, etc

 

Thanks all for your very helpful and enlightening inputs. I’ve made a decision. I’m going GE76 i7-11800H with 3070 GPU. Has 32 GB RAM and 2 TB SSD with raid-0 config (1 TB + 1 TB). I’m buying three of these machines, so it’s not a trivial expense and your help is much appreciated!

 

That's because your offloading the graphics card at 1080 which doesn't give a true picture of the actual performance potential. As I said, the 3080 if significantly more powerful, it is not a trivial difference and even HD laptops get plugged into external monitors. You can CPU bind a 3080 just add easily as a 3070 but a 3070 loses ground quicky as the resolution goes up.

I do agree with you on almost all of your points but they are not an entirely accurate depiction of what's on offer to someone who has been inquiring about both QHD and HD and further asked about all possible options. When you're doing that you have real performance potential on the table that can be picked up or not as suits the whim.

 

The logical fallacies people produce in support of their arguments haven't changed much in a world where change seems to be the only constant; I'll give you that. The man has chosen, based on what he has said, chosen well; for my part there is nothing more to be said here.

 

Yep, night and day difference from what he's replacing.

Do stop by if you've any questions getting things lit up Mr Cummins. Someone here will have an answer for you or at least be able to muddy the waters in my case. Gaming questions, performance settings, that kind of thing here, there is a separate section for windows questions.

Congrats on the new toys and good luck!

 

Everyone is so generous with all this help. Thanks very much!

 

I have the GP76 and have tested the GE76 for 3 weeks before I returned it back to Amazon. The only thing different from the GE76 is the lack of a SD card, no RGB lights, and no subwoofer speakers. The construction is pretty much the same but about $400 less for the same specs.

 

It's always interesting to observe how having/not having RGB can affect perceptions about performance and build quality. It seems that RGB has an uncanny ability to offset some pretty sinful shortcomings, while not having it can sometimes cause redeeming features to be mysteriously overlooked.

 

I have the lights disabled within a few minutes of turning on a new laptop. I suppose it might be as long as ten minutes if it's not immediately obvious as to where to turn them all off.